1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a telephone modular jack for connection with a standard modular plug, and more particularly to such a modular jack incorporating terminal units for telephone wires in which the terminal units are directly interconnected to cantilever spring contacts and which is adapted for production assembly by automated techniques.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,633, there has been proposed a telephone modular jack in which cantilever spring contacts held on a mold base are directly connected to corresponding terminal units mounted on the mold base. The direct connection between the terminal units and the spring contacts are established upon the mounting of the terminal units to the base at which the portion of each cantilever spring contact is forced into a slot formed in each of the terminal units for pressed engagement therewith. The patent also discloses to utilize the cantilever spring contacts which are stamped and formed from a metal strip and further partially molded in the base for facilitating the assembly of the jack. Despite these advantages of the direct electrical connection and the molding in of the cantilever spring contacts, it is rather difficult to fully assemble the jack including a cover having a plug reception window by an automated procedure because of that the terminal units and the cover have to be assembled on the base from different directions. In fact, the prior modular jack is not intended to have the cover assembled in a production line but to have the cover subsequently assembled to the base at a particular site. To date, there is a constant need for fabricating telephone modular jacks in large quantities by utilizing automatic techniques, taking advantage of the molding in of the cantilever spring contacts and taking advantage of the direct electrical connection between the contacts and the terminal units mounted to the base. But unfortunately, no telephone jacks with the above features are found to be successfully assembled by automated procedures.